0:00:01
That's funny. Continue. Hello, everyone. Welcome. I am Briar Harvey. This is the neurodiversity media network. Today, we are with the fabulous Morgan, and we are talking about this one. Yeah. This one's one of my favorite shows. And someday, it'll be better appreciated. It's it's not quite yet, but Give it time. I'll give it time.
0:00:37
Magic and elementals and figuring out how to put the pieces together internally. So I don't think I've ever asked you why battle's worth fighting because It's the only battle worth fighting. I'll elaborate a bit because I know that's gonna need a little bit more explanation. But k.
0:01:13
For a long time, I struggled with the name of this flaming business. You're aware of this because I complained to you about it for a solid year and a half. And, like, it's had a few iterations and none of them fit properly. And the reason this one does is because really it's about figuring out which battles actually mean the most to you. And fight in those battles and also, you know, standing up for yourself and fighting for the you that you can be and that you wanna be and that arguably you should be per your own description and parameters. So no, it's the only battle worth fighting. So that's why it's called battles worth fighting. And it feels relevant today when we talk about air.
0:02:17
Air elementals are slippery little soles. And quietly convert it. Me too. It's, I think, archetypaly, one of the ones I struggle the most with. Mhmm. I I seem to recall that I was supposed to do some homework in preparation of this episode. And I've forgotten what it is. So now we'll see if I did my homework and if it actually will also see if I even remember what it is by the time we're done. Right. It'll come up again or it won't But also, I think the one that I have, the least type integration with so my Sunshine is water.
0:03:15
My Ascendant is Earth. There is not a lot of air in my charts and I am autistic and struggle with communication. You too. You're most combative. Elemental relationship, accepting perhaps dark is with air easily and by far. So I am looking forward ish. Looking forward ish. It makes you feel any better. Mine yells at me all the time to so, you know -- Mhmm. -- I am more a creature of air than air myself.
0:04:02
So let's start at the top. What is air in charge of? Alright. So the easiest way to look at this is in its pear, actually. So you have Arith which we talked about last time, that's your foundation, how things show up, where you structure things, and what you put in place. Your responsibilities, your suggestions, stuff like that.
0:04:30
Air is largely to do with communication. Yes. But also with ideas, with bringing force what you have inside outside where people can see it. And in a lot of ways, it's more visible than earth is. It's like the front facing. Part of whatever is your day, where earth is the underlying back office administrative part of whatever you're doing. You need both. They perform subtly different functions. But specifically for air, it's about the communication and the visible bit that you can see and present to the world. Okay. So It's the visible bits that present themselves to the world, which, yeah, explains why I have so many problems with this.
0:05:26
What are the main concerns of error? Air is a carrier more than anything else. It's taken me a while to figure this particular part of it out. But bear with me. I'll walk you through it. Insofar as it's about communication. It takes what you have from yourself, from your other elementals and brings it forward. Which means it's concerned with the clarity of what you're saying. It's concerned with what you're saying and how. But it doesn't inherently discriminate between what's good to say and what's bad to say and what you should say and what you shouldn't say. That's where your air elemental likes to talk and it likes to say any of the things. A healthier elemental will put a little bit of boundaries around it and kind of work with your earth and your other ones. To not get you into parable the minute you open your mouth, but that's not really its job. Its job is to take what you have. Input it. So okay.
0:06:50
What happens when there's too much air? Too much air. Talks about everything before it has any chance to take root. So if you think about ideas for this part in particular, there's a certain amount of incubating that you do with ideas, just to yourself, where you think about them, and you maybe start to feel out if you really wanna do it or you start to put things in place before you talk to people at large about it. With too much air that'll come out your mouth the moment you see it for everything.
0:07:29
It's increasingly difficult to keep things to yourself, to be tactful, to not blab insider secrets that you get right away to somebody and, like, I'm not saying that it will necessarily turn you into someone that indiscriminately sets everything to everybody. You might pick a person or two, but they get all of it constantly all the time. There's not much of a filter there with an error that is too much. And also, if, for example, you've got too much air going on and also too much water, then that's gonna come out in emotional outbursts all over the place. So you're gonna wind up essentially a storm where you're doing a lot of talking, a lot bit emotional. What have you? If it's too much fire and too much air, then it's gonna come out like a sort of Sandstorm really. It'll pick up everything. Push it. And it will be, like, quite abrasive, and tactical, and all rub, everyone raw, around you, including you. They're all sort of hurt on the way up.
0:08:51
I definitely want to make sure that we come back to what the assessment process of your air landscape is because earth is easy to assess that. It's very physically what is there. Air is much harder to read, but we will come back to it. What happens when you don't have enough You're not speaking. Even when you should.
0:09:23
Now, I wanna be clear that this isn't just, oh, if you're quiet, you don't have enough air. No. This is you can't bring yourself to see the things you need to say. You'll sort of stop yourself before you voice things. It's like when you're in a room with someone and you know you need to say a specific thing, And instead of being able to get it out, you're sitting deciding what you need to say over and over and over and it doesn't quite make it a premise. Or you don't know how to order your thoughts into something like if you're doing emails rather than verbally speaking. It's not being able to figure out how you want to phrase something and then sitting on it and then not really getting to it and wandering off.
0:10:16
I definitely identify writer's block and selective mutism as Yep. Hair dysfunction. And as things that I struggle with, both of those things, it's It's a whole thing. Same. Same. Okay. You talked about air and water. What about air and fire? Too much or too little? Too much. Too much. Air with fire. Is that what we're talking about? Not sure, sandstorms, where it comes out, but in the abrasive way that sort of rubs out everyone wrong. Okay.
0:11:02
So what does this look like in terms of inter dialogue? Okay. So it can look like one or two different things. If you've got a lot of problems with not enough air. So again, we're looking at your slight muted on your right hand block. That side of the track here It looks a lot like playing entire conversations in your head along with every paradigm of what you could have said and maybe should have said.
0:11:39
And what you might want to see maybe, but never actually settling down to any of them because it's not that you're gonna like the desire to say these things. It's not even that you're gonna not know what you want to say. It's just not gonna make it out. So internal dialogue wise, really, what you're looking for is a lot of a lot of discussion that just doesn't make it out. And perhaps even tinging into no one wants to hear what I have to say anyway? Or what's the point? Or that sort of thing.
0:12:24
If there's too much hair, it looks a little bit like not being able to settle to anyone idea. It's like shiny object syndrome on steroids inside your head when there's too much hair going on. You'll have idea after idea after idea. They'll usually be in completely different categories and not related to each other because if you've got a lot of ideas relating to each other, that's alright. That's one thing. But if you have a lot where you're going through your day and everything you encounter immediately turns into, oh, I should do this kind of product or this kind of business or I should go and take up basket weaving or underwater scuba diving in the same sentence, that's there's too much air going on. Not enough filtering power from your other elementals.
0:13:26
One of the issues, I think, with processing air, is that the tools that we use to write and talk about this stuff require that you have air. Like, it's journaling, meditation, being able to have those conversations is so so terribly terribly annoying because the ways in which you encourage air to be more healthy require you to use different elemental approaches like Earth primarily. Earth's the space between your structures. So If you want to get it to flow more one way than another, then really what you're doing is building a structure in the way and topping it bends. Say more. How are you building structures? I mean, other than going to your environmental and saying pretty please, No. What you're doing is you're working with your house elemental. I'm not being quite as flipped with that. But it means putting in place boundaries, which is a very interesting, or putting in place routines, or schedules, or rhythms throughout your day. It means maybe picking your safe people to talk to and having different ones. It means calendar time, sometimes. It's imposing structure on it from the outside so that there's less of a, whoa, we can do anything we want and more of a, okay, amyloid to be in these ways.
0:15:24
And I think there is correct me if I'm wrong here. But because it is air, there is an element of movement to it. Yeah. I like this, not at all. But in fact, one of the best ways for me to encourage my air flow development is to take a fucking walk. But it's not the only way you can do it. No. It does help. But it does it's it's certain for me personally. That's that's the need more hair, take a look. The thing there is you don't want more hair if it's just gonna be stagnant hair. Because then it just gets kind of feisty and smelly and doesn't do very much anyway. So now the movement helps a lot Personally, I prefer dancing to going out for a walk, but, you know, to each other. Yeah, I think there is an element of motion and of movement that's really important to emphasize with air because I find that when I am lacking air, it's not that it's not there. It's that it's stale and stagnant and not moving. Mhmm. You do need to build in some drafts. That's true. I would say The air also really likes things like songs and rhyme and beauty and bad puns, frankly, The more silly you can be with the way you play with your words, the happier it is, which is super.
0:17:21
Not always great for sales Pete, but, you know, fun. Well, I mean, that's what error is in business. Right? It's the part that brings you joy. It's the part that lives in Wimsey. I think without that aspect in business and in life. We have a tendency to get very staid. Oh, yes. You can build yourself rather fabulous cages if you relied too much on your Earth elemental.
0:18:17
Air, the minute you cage it, it stops being air. Sorry. It goes nuts. Are you then? I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. It's the it's the pathological demand avoidance of the elements. Screw you. I'm not doing it. Yep. And it's so fickle as well because you can talk a lot and still have problems with air if you're not talking about the things that it really feels you should be talking about. Oh, I feel like this is something about where our homework was. I believe it was. Yes. Because there was a phrase I think we made it the title actually.
0:19:00
Where air is basically it's less of the communicating than you think it'll be, but it's more than you want it to be every time. You always have to share more than you think you might want to. But that doesn't necessarily mean filling the actual air with words. Just the right words. And there's vulnerability there. Right? There is a lot of real vulnerability, and the ability to talk about the things that we are not confident in. Mhmm.
0:19:53
The way I sort of look at it quietly to myself is air is happiest when it gets to speak for all of its besties. And its besties include the water elemental, which is where the deep feelings live. The dark elemental where all your mistakes and things you'd rather not admit to live. I mean, light, fine. They have a casual relationship. But also fire where you're talking about your ambitions and your goals and what you want. And even Earth where you're talking about where your limits are and what you're gonna do. Like, it's not particularly pleased if it doesn't get to visit everybody. So And it wants to be able to say those things in the best ways so that it is putting the best of its friends forward.
0:21:01
Air is your public representative. Basically. And if it doesn't get to put the best parts of all of its friends forward, it'll just put forward. Everything so that some of it makes its way out. So or nothing. One or the other. Depends with soaking. Okay. No. You can't just say, depends if it's soaking. What happens when air sucks? Well, that's when you get too little of it. But really, it's not that it decreases in volume because it's all the spaces in between. It's just basically what it says, okay, well, I'm not playing with you anymore. Screw you. You can have Greece guys for a while. I'm not doing it.
0:21:53
In our landscape wise, air to me often looks like the weather patterns that you have right. So you don't look at it directly, but you can see the effects of it on the landscape around you. If it's blowing a gail, that's fairly obvious. Efforts, clouded over, and nothing's moving, and the air is completely still mad at you. There's different flavors of mad. If it still believes that you're trying and want to be communicating, that's when you're more likely to get a gale going and stuff will just blur out. If it's pretty sure that you're never gonna say anything anyway, No. That'll just be still did not move.
0:22:46
And I think at least for me, one of the places where I can really tell or take air's temperature, so to speak, is when air and water get oiled together because the air gets heavy Right? And it's humid and, like, you can feel that in your inner landscape. So I have dragons. I've talked about my dragons for in this series and elsewhere as creatures of primarily air. I have the benefit of having to look up -- Mhmm. -- test the weather. Fairly often. It's it's a thing that I personally have to be very aware of. How can you get feel for your personal whether when that's not always the focus? That's one of those tricky ones because like you, I have plenty reason to just dip in and be like, okay, weather bad. Got it. So I'm trying to reverse engineer how you would do that if you can't just go look out the window.
0:24:13
I think, actually, one of the easiest ways to tell is in your breath. How are you breathing when you're speaking? It's such a shallow wood. And kind of breathless and you're not quite getting it. Yeah. Maybe you've not got enough air going on there, but if you're still breathing quite easily, and normally, but it doesn't feel like you're blarching everything out or not saying anything. You're probably alright.
0:24:48
If you are moving around and you notice that you're just not breathing for a while and then you gasped for air because I mean, as to that constantly, probably also worth a discussion at that point. So, like, it does come out quite a bit in the breath. Watch your conversations actually. Is how I would reverse engineer that too? Because presumably you have people that you talk to in your life that you're fairly close to. If you notice that you're just listening all the time or only engaging in a very surface way. And you find yourself sort of like, I wish I could have said something about this thing or it just doesn't occur to you to say it at the time worth the discussion. Also, if you are monopolizing the conversation accidentally worth a discussion too. That's some of that is gonna be social skills related. But if you're generally okay ish, and you notice it going more one way or the other. That's another place to take the temperature there.
0:26:02
Howard Bauchner: And I think it's worth acknowledging especially I mean, this is true of all of the elementals, but especially with air, when it's not working, these are true markers of your mental health. So if you're not breathing well, you're probably also struggling with anxiety. And you need to learn some breath work skills. And there are whole fields of study out there. I will add it to my list, actually, because I feel like a breath work session would be deeply beneficial to a lot of people. I have just the person. And it's it's really important to know how to breathe and how to control your breath when you have anxiety and have panic. The same is true if you are talking all of the time or not speaking at all.
0:27:08
Both of these are good indicators of depression or mania. Potentially both depending on your own personal makeup. It's a way for you to get in touch with the ways in which your emotional state manifests. And, air is, for me, at least, one of the better markers that I have because I can see that things aren't going well with the weather internally pretty immediately. Whereas it takes me longer to note those external symptoms. The other thing that's worth pointing out about air is while it's close friends with all of the elementals, it's arguably closest friendship that it will not give up on however matter is, is with water, which is the seat of your emotional self, basically. So if all else fails, that's what's going to come out. With your air. It will be your feelings. It'll be what's going on with that. And now it is distinct from things like autism and ADHD where you'll have your communication quirks and so on anyway. This is different to your usual pattern, not different to the norm. That's what we're getting at that. Yeah.
0:28:50
And I think that your neurovariance is just is in your inner life. Right? Your brain works the way it works. So when you're building your inner landscape, and if you missed that, go back to the first episode in this series. We talked a lot about how to figure out what that looks like, how to build it, especially if you can't visually see things, what it might feel like to have an internal landscape. And when it comes to your neurotype, that's just your brain works the way that it works. So the inner landscapes that you're building already accommodates for those things. Yeah. It's just a part of the design. Yeah. I just feel the need to bring this up. Every time we talk about this, because it's not diagnostic in that way and it shouldn't be. And -- No. -- more to do with your weather rather than who you are as a person. And it because my inner landscape is the truest representation of me. It's actually much easier for me to see the ways in which my masking or other accommodations have been built incorrectly? Yeah. Because they won't work internally. No. They just don't.
0:30:41
That's how you wind up with, I think, one of the first times we looked to air for you was when it was ripping out your garden every five seconds. After you'd been working so hard on planting it. But It was great fun. Great deal was. But, yeah, there really is no hiding from your elementals. So let's talk a little bit then about how to feed it appropriately.
0:31:26
One of my favorites for that is singing, and silliness and puns. And making up short stories or playing pretend. But singing especially because it's also gonna tell you right away if there's an issue with your hair elemental. Because quite often, even if we can still speak. When we try and sing something, especially a song we really like, our voice will crack. If there's an issue, or we'll feel things when we're singing, or it will be hard to get the words out. So it does feed the choosing, and it will also alert you if there's an issue. Regardless of the quality of your voice. Yes. Most CORAL directors will tell you that everyone can learn to sing in geek, even people who are tone deaf, can learn to sing in key because there is a tonal resonance to singing that and and there's There's a lot of physical stuff here because your diaphragm fills, so that's air and you're breathing.
0:32:48
And you can't breathe shallowly into your chest. You have to take this as stomach breathing here. So you're filling your whole body in order to push out a sound that is or is not resonant. And eventually, if you do it often enough, you will be able to hear or feel that resonance and whether or not you are doing it correctly. So the magic of song is not just a fun thing to do. It's a good diagnostic tool. Oh, incredibly. And you don't even have to be good at it to notice if something's off. Like, if you have a favorite song, then you can usually sing x amount of it before you need to take a breath, and you're suddenly only able to sing half of it. Before you need to take a breath.
0:33:46
Doesn't take a rocket science to to figure out that there's something going on there that you should maybe think about. And I'm not saying you gotta be Bill Withers and lovely day in it out here either. But like know what your own actual vocal tolerance is And again, you find this by singing by playing. And if you don't like your voice, that too is something you may need to think about. I know most people do not like to hear their voices back to them. And even those of us who make a career out of our voices, I'd certainly, my recorded voice does not sound the same to me as my voice in my head. You're hearing it through the air rather than through your boat. Right. You know, there's that discomfort. But I think that once you get used to that idea, you probably should like your voice, at least to a point. So something to think about. But if you really don't headwinds while you're singing, so you don't have to hear it until you're more used to the idea. Like, don't let it be a barrier for you. But it's something you'll probably want to learn to like at some point.
0:35:07
And what's key here is not ear plugs. Noise cancelling headphones. Everything with the mask and neck. Right. So you have something else to focus on. So I think to it's worth talking about the exhibited performances of ill. Because acting, telling jokes, stand up, singing, all of these things require you to put your air in the public domain. And they also all require you to pull on other parts of yourself. To have something to say.
0:36:11
One of my first joint ventures, and this is years ago now, was an improv course for copywriters. And I loved it. Because, truly, I don't think people recognize how valuable those types of skills are. Take an improv class. Go do a stand up nights. Or Go play the in the or a role playing game or something. Insert plug here. Yes. Insert plug here. Because Heather's games are absolutely different from DND. And it's important for you who to understand the difference.
0:37:05
So what makes your stuff different here in terms of exploring this landscape? Well, for one thing, we use magic, not just clicketyclackety dice. Although sometimes I'll use them There are some clicketyclackety dice. I would have revolted if there weren't clickety, clackety dice. I do need to keep some amount of click to clickety dice to keep the people happy. However, technically speaking, we don't need the click to click to click to click to days. But we do need the magic for it.
0:37:37
And the reason it's quite so different is because the worlds are built that people go and adventure in. One, they exist largely as entities onto them. Themselves. So they will do random shit and stuff will continue as you do things and you'll miss things that will come in and that's just fun. But they also kinda trick you into facing your biggest fears and problems and blocks by having you go along your merry way adventuring then, WAM, something that you will have to deal with in order to continue. And you can't just duck around it or dodge around it. And it's something that will have been stopping you out in the real world as well. But more often than not, you're much better avoiding doing the thing in the real world or you can just like not look at it or turn the other way or go the other direction.
0:38:39
But the game is a game. It takes some of the pressure off of it, so it doesn't feel like you're gonna have to do anything too horribly serious. Until you're confronted with it. But you care enough about it because your character in the game is you. You don't get to pick a new name. You don't get to pick what character class you are even. No. So top t is and then decide what it is based on what your answers are. So, no, it's you in this other world doing this adventure thing with this quest coming face to face with arguably the scariest things that you have to deal with out in the real world. And even more importantly discovering that you have the tools to deal with it and move past it. That's what makes a difference.
0:39:31
So Let's bring us back to air and to a close. We talked about how we nurture it. We talked about how to feed it. We talked about how to assess it. Because it is your public representative. What do you do when you can tell that it's not working? And haven't figured out how to either turn it off or turn it down? Well, this is where you turn to your good friend, earth elemental and put in some drills. Because usually almost all the time.
0:40:32
When you have that problem with air, it's because it either has too little space to move or too much space to move. And normally, it's too much space for almost everybody. It's too much space and then not enough to draw from. So what you start to do is user earth to build structures for it to play around. So I'm gonna say what that looks like in the landscape first because that's a little bit easier to define, and then we'll talk about what that will probably look like out in the real physical world, whatever.
0:41:15
Anyway, So that could be things like putting in random rock formations worth like swoopy bits and holes. Or building yourself this really nice canyon. Or if you don't have any mountains yet, maybe build a couple. So it's got something to do. And like varying things a bit. You might wanna plant a forest if you don't have much in the way of forests.
0:41:43
I'm actually you're saying all of this and I'm like, what you're actually doing is creating prior perceptive jungle gyms for your air. Well, yeah, they get bored. Rather like cats, if you give them nothing to climb or jump around or dive through or fly over, The board. Third board. Your air is bored. So the way you fix that is by speed. You're elemental. And putting in a jungle gym in whatever form you want that to take. And what that means in the physical world is you need put some constraints in place. You need to pick some arbitrary games like, k, we can work on this, but you're only allowed to do it for seventeen and a half minutes or something completely random.
0:42:33
Or you could be like, okay, we're gonna write this thing. But I have to fit in this weird word, this weird word, and this weird word, and I can't use this word, or wherever it happens to be. Listen. SEO, your or Mad Lib, your SEO. Trust me on this. I got a whole net word built this way. You're really, really, really stuck. Right? And that's not working. What you do is you pick something and make a bad pun out of it. Product names are excellent for this. So make several bad puns on what the product name could be, and you'll feel a bit better about life. And so all your air elemental because now it's like, oh, okay. We're allowed to play. Right. Because some of it's permission to play too. And I encourage you to continue to develop your tool set.
0:43:30
Morgan thinks ChatGPT is the devil. I do. It has no soul. It cannot create I will die on this hill. However, if you want to use chat GPT, whatever -- Go for it. -- you there are plugins that allow you to talk to it. And you can get the digital version back or you can read it. But, truly, if you're stuck on your communication, then go and use tools that actually make communication easier. Yes. If you feel like being a heat, then go and use the cat GPT thing. Fine. But, you know, there's other tools you can use too.
0:44:14
Improved good, role playing, very good, talking to yourself in the mirror. Questionable, but it does work. I have a whole series on affirmations y'all. Oh, I don't even mean affirmations here. No. Just talking to yourself into the mirror. Which is, you know, fun. Okay. Tied in a bow for us, final thoughts on air.
0:44:47
It's always gonna make you a little bit uncomfortable. That's by design. If it's too easy to say the things that you need to say, you're not saying the thing you really need to say. You might be saying a lot. You might be saying some incredibly important things. But it's not what you need to say. And, truly, the best things I have ever written and or published in some way were things that I was a little hesitant.
0:45:28
To hit that send button on. Yep. Of which? Ones are from when you're dark elemental, decides it's got something you need to say, they're the worst kind. We will get dark eventually.
0:45:54
Next time we have who in sequence, fire or water. Fire. Fire. Okay. Fire. Air. Air. Air. Fire. Fine. Making sure. Well, at least be somewhat traditional about the first four. Just making sure fire next time. Mhmm. I also have a complicated relationship with Fire Fire. Yeah. It'll be a fun time. It'll be a fun time. Yeah. Alright. People have complicated relationships thus far. And We will talk about that in two weeks. You can find the rest of the series at the neurodiversity media network dot com you can find morgan's game at battles worth fighting dot com. And I think you have anyone starting soon. Yeah. Right? Probably want to take a wander over shortly because it'll be starting in the next couple weeks, actually. I think what's the plan? I should probably actually get around to promoting that. But Yeah. You might wanna you might wanna. Yeah. I might. We will see you next time for fire y'all have an amazing day. Bye now.
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